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this holiday seasonrather Searching on GoogleMore Americans will likely turn to larger language models to find gifts, deals and sales. Retailers could see a 520 percent increase in traffic from chatbots and AI search engines this year compared to 2024, according to a recent Shopping Report from Adobe. OpenAI is already capitalizing on the trend: last week, ChatGPT creator announcement A major partnership with Walmart will allow users to purchase products directly within the chat window.
As people begin to rely on chatbots to discover new products, retailers need to rethink their approach to online marketing. For decades, companies have tried to game Google’s search results using techniques known collectively as search engine optimization, or SEO. Now, to get noticed by AI bots, more brands are turning to “generative engine optimization,” or GEO. The cottage industry is expected to be worth approx $850 million this yearAccording to one market research estimate.
GEO is, in many ways, less of a new invention than a later phase of SEO. Many SEO consultants, in fact, come from the world of SEO. At least some of their old tricks may still apply because the main goal remains the same: anticipate the questions people will ask and make sure your content appears in the answers. But there is growing evidence that chatbots are providing different types of information than search engines.
Imory Marcus, chief executive of geo firm Brandlight, estimated that there was about 70 percent overlap between the top Google links and the sources cited by the AI tool. Now, he says, that correlation has dropped below 20 percent.
Search engines often favor wordlessness – think of long blog posts that appear above recipes on cooking websites But Marcus says chatbots tend to favor information presented in simple, structured formats like bulleted lists and FAQ pages. “One FAQ can answer a hundred different questions instead of an article that just says how great your entire brand is,” he says. “You basically give AI engines a hundred different options to choose from.”
The things people ask chatbots are often very specific, so it’s helpful for companies to expose very granular information. “No one goes to ChatGPT and asks, ‘Is General Motors a good company?’” says Marcus. Instead, they ask whether the Chevy Silverado or Chevy Blazer has a longer driving range. “Writing more specific content will actually yield much better results because the questions are more specific.”
